


Zihuatanejo

by murron



Series: My Way Home Is Through You [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode Related, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-02
Updated: 2012-04-02
Packaged: 2017-11-02 22:27:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/374030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/murron/pseuds/murron
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean walked out of the psychiatric clinic with a face as dark as a thundercloud. Sequel to <i>Earth Begins</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Zihuatanejo

**Author's Note:**

> spoilers: up to and including 7.17  
> standard disclaimers apply
> 
>  **a/n** : This ficlet is partly inspired by and contains references to zatnikatel’s beautifully heartbreaking 7.17 coda [Care](http://zatnikatel.livejournal.com/69609.html) at LJ.

**Brooks Was Here**

Dean walked out of the psychiatric clinic with a face as dark as a thundercloud. Climbing into the car with Sam, he dropped down in the shotgun seat and slammed the door shut with a vengeance. He clenched his fists on his thighs before Sam could determine whether his hands were shaking. 

“How is he?” Sam asked but Dean only shook his head. His gaze swept back to the clinic as if he wanted to look through the walls and keep an eye on Cas for a little while longer.

They’d come here in the small of the night, driving up to the hospital with the car’s headlights switched off so they wouldn’t attract any undue notice. They’d opened the car’s doors in synch but when Sam started to get out alongside Dean, Dean had stalled him. 

“Would you mind if I went in alone?” he’d asked. Sam worried about Cas and would have given a lot to see how he was doing but there was something in Dean’s voice that made him take a backseat without question. Dean needed time to cope with Cas’ return and Sam wouldn’t steal it from him.

His brother did a good job of keeping a blank face but Sam could still identify the signs that telegraphed the enormousness of Dean’s freak out. He noticed very well how Dean licked his lips when he was nervous or how he stared into the middle distance when he didn’t think Sam was watching. 

Sam could only imagine Dean’s shock when he’d found ‘Emanuel’. Over the last few months, it would have been easier to bend Dean’s knees the wrong way than to get him to talk about his loss. He’d never been the sharing type but with Cas? Any grief that Dean might have felt had been locked up so tightly it would’ve taken a crowbar to pry it out of him. So, no, he hadn’t talked. Instead he’d carried Cas’ trenchcoat from town to town, transferring it from car to car as diligently as he moved their arsenal. 

Sam looked from Dean’s stiff profile to the thumb he kept scraping over the seam of his jeans. He didn’t really know what to say but, damn, he had to try.

“Dean.”

“Just drive.”

Outside of the car, the sky began to pale with the first light of morning.

: : :

A month later, Sam and Dean returned to the clinic. In that month, they’d done their best to convince Crowley’s spies that they had nothing more important on their agenda than stopping Dick. They’d tracked the movements of Leviathan owned companies, a task that seemed overwhelming now that Frank was gone (although Sam still didn’t believe he was dead). They documented Roman’s public appearances, gathered every available scrap of intel while at the same time searching for a scrivener who knew how to keep his mouth shut.

Once again, they arrived at the clinic at night, only this time, Sam and Dean both went to the side-entrance. At their knock, a key turned in the lock and Meg let them in with a look of vast exasperation.

“Really,” she said as Sam and Dean slipped into the hall. “I'm beginning to think you don’t trust me with him.”

Sam clenched his jaw but said nothing. Beside him, Dean was looking up and down the corridor to make sure they were alone.

“What can I say,” Dean murmured. “The results of your background check are still pending.”

“I’m hurt,” Meg scoffed. “Oh and by the way, _Florence_ , you can stop sending care packages. I think Clarence has all the socks he needs.”

Dean flinched and Sam just about stopped himself from smacking Meg into the nearest wall. He did draw a sharp breath, though, and Meg, noticing, winked at him.

“Shall we?”

: : :

Walking through the halls of the clinic, Sam decided he’d never feel safe in a hospital ever again. The bare walls seemed to echo with Lucifer’s laughter, bringing back memories of Sam cowering in a small white room as he waited for the devil to fry his brain for good.

Sam smelled the sharp odor of disinfectant and bleach and hated that they ever had to leave Cas in this place.

Meg walked with them to Cas’ door and would have gone in as well if Dean hadn’t put his hand on the door-handle and glared at her.

“Do you mind?” he growled.

Meg sneered at him but sketched a shallow bow and backed away. When Sam walked past her, she smiled at him, her mouth curling in an insolent, mocking little tilt. Sam had never been so glad to close the door in someone’s face.

Inside the room, the neon lamps were switched off so the only illumination came from the moonlight that filtered through the frosted glass window. Dean made straight for the bed and Sam followed, looking down at Cas with a pang.

Castiel had curled into a ball on the mattress, his eyes squeezed shut and his face immobile. Hunkering down on his haunches, Dean talked softly to Cas and tried to rouse him. He grasped Cas’ shoulder and shocked Sam as he touched the side of Cas’ face. Nothing worked, though, until Sam crouched down on the other side of the bed and placed a hand between Cas’ shoulderblades. He looked over Cas’ curved back and Dean met his gaze, his face near crazy with worry. 

“Cas,” Sam said in a low voice. “Come on, man. Come back to us.”

At his words, Sam felt Cas shiver under his palm. Slowly, Cas unfolded his limbs, turned over on his back and looked at Sam with clouded, gray eyes. Sam stopped breathing but the next second, Cas’ eyes cleared and returned to their usual blue.

“Sam?” 

“Yeah.”

A frown deepening between his brows, Cas turned the other way and looked for Dean. Yet even when he caught sight of him, Cas seized the front of Dean’s shirt and clenched his fist into the fabric as if he needed to make sure Dean was real. Pressing his mouth into a tight line, Dean grasped Cas lower arm. 

“Rise and shine, buddy,” he said. “We’re getting you out of here.”

“What?” Cas croaked, the crack in his voice squeezing Sam’s heart like a vice. Cas sat up and winced, his left shoulder twitching. He clutched something in his fist, Sam noticed, a crumpled piece of paper. Whatever it was, Cas made sure he held it close to his body as if he was afraid someone would snatch it away from him.

Swallowing around the lump in his throat, Sam fetched the white tennis shoes the hospital provided for its patients and helped Cas put them on. Cas cooperated even as he protested with mounting agitation. “No. I can’t. It’s too dangerous; Crowley…”

“We got it covered, Cas,” Dean assured him. He didn’t let go of Cas’ arm, not even for a second. “Trust me.”

Those two words worked so well they might as well have been magical. Without further objection, Cas let the Winchesters grab his elbows and pull him to his feet. With the angel sandwiched between them, Sam cast a look at the door and wondered, not for the first time, if Meg was eavesdropping behind it. They couldn’t go back through the hall or she’d see them but they’d known that before.

“I know you’ve been through the ringer, Cas, but do you think you can zap us out of here?” Dean asked, and added quickly, “Just outside to our car.”

“I can’t.”

“I know you’re beat but--”

“Lucifer snapped my wing.”

Horrified, Dean fell silent. Sam looked Cas over, noticed the way his shoulders sagged and traced all the lines on Cas’ face that had grown stiff with pain. It was on the tip of his tongue to tell Cas to hand Lucifer back. Cas hadn’t deserved this, none of them had. Careful not to spook him, Sam took Cas by the shoulders and turned him so he faced Sam.

“He’s not real, Cas,” Sam said. “I know it doesn’t feel that way and I know he’ll say and do anything to make you believe otherwise. But he’s not real.” He gave Cas’ shoulders a gentle squeeze. “Your wings are fine.”

_He’s not real_ , Sam insisted privately and refused to wonder how the Lucifer of his head had sometimes referenced movies Sam had never seen or heard of.

Cas lowered his gaze and let out a breath. Sam felt him draw the air in and out of his lungs before he straightened his back. Sam exhaled a small sigh of his own when the sound of feathers rustled through the room. Cas closed one hand around Sam’s arm, the other around Dean’s wrist and they were out of there.

: : :

Outside it was drizzling and fine sheets of rain billowed over the dark parking lot. Cas had missed his mark, setting the three of them down beside a chainlink fence with maybe fifty meters of concrete between them and the car. It was the right side of the fence, though, so Dean and Sam slung Cas’ arms around their shoulders and hurried him to the Buick they were driving these days. Cas sagged between them but he kept to his feet and they made it to the car before any of the lights outside the hospital came on. They eased Cas into the backseat and drove off, heading for the interstate without a backwards glance.

 

**So Was Red**

The cabin was another of Rufus’ safehouses, a hidden, cramped, one-room place in the backcountry of upstate New York. Equipped with a stack of sigils the scrivener had given them, Sam and Dean had spent three days covering the place in every ward imaginable, painting the walls, ceilings and floors with devils traps and Enochian obscuring spells. The scrivener, a short, scrawny guy of about fifty years with tattoos all over, had even provided them with an incantation that made the cabin look like a meadow to everyone who didn’t know it was there. 

“Like Grimauld Place No 12,” Sam had commented and Dean had looked at him like he’d grown a few horns.

After they’d camouflaged the place, Sam and Dean had stocked the pantry, piled up books to read and logs for firewood. Not that Cas had to use the latter but it would come in handy when the brothers stopped over for a day or two. It was the safest, most comfortable refuge they could rig up at short notice. 

After they’d snatched Cas from the clinic and from under Meg’s supervision, Sam and Dean settled him in the cabin and, with Cas’ consent, finished the place’s protection by angel proofing its perimeters. Cas wouldn’t be able to leave on his own but he also wouldn’t get any surprise visits from his family. They made up the couch for Cas and gave him clothes to wear instead of the hospital scrubs. Cas accepted all that with little comment, although he did seem relieved to be away from the closed ward. 

On the second evening after their arrival at the cabin, Dean made soup for himself and Sam and the three of them settled around the table. To Dean’s and Sam’s surprise, Cas asked for a share of their dinner and started spooning up chicken soup alongside them. Sam wondered whether Cas did that because he’d gotten into the habit of eating during his stint as Emanuel or because he wanted something warm inside him. When Lucifer had messed with Sam’s head, he’d often been very cold. 

Cas appeared to be a bit better, though, now that he didn’t spend his days in isolation anymore. Back at the hospital he’d seemed close to catatonic, shutting down as much as he could, perhaps so he wouldn’t hurt anyone. In his plain white pants and t-shirt he’d looked disturbingly frail to Sam. But now Cas wore the blue hoodie and jeans Dean had picked out for him, he sat on the couch and read, listened to music and even took hot showers. Only the night had been bad, with Cas kneeling on the floor and the cabin shaking around them. He’d still been aware enough to yell at Sam and Dean to stay away from him but the ceiling lamp had crashed to the floor and shattered before he’d calmed down. After that, the three of them had stayed up and played Go Fish until sunrise.

Every now and again Sam itched to ask Cas how Lucifer was with him but he always swallowed the question at the last second, scared that even the smallest signal of interest on his part would open a way back for the devil. Last night, after the house had stopped trembling, Cas had remained on the floor and kept muttering that he didn’t want to wake up. Dean had knelt down with him, had seized both Cas’ arms in a firm grip and had told him over and over that Cas was already awake, that Dean himself was real, much like he’d told it to Sam all those months ago. Sam only hoped Cas would have an easier time believing Dean. 

_Cas can do this_ , Sam thought, he hoped, reminding himself of something Dean had said once .

_He’s tough for a little nerdy guy with wings_. 

A winged nerd who currently chewed on diced carrots and shredded chicken.

Sam and Dean both watched Cas eat, it was so novel. Sam’s mind still stumbled over the fact that Cas was back at all. He tried to imagine what the last few months had been like for Cas, but his head movie always stuttered to a halt at the image of Cas walking out of the river. He just couldn’t imagine the angel leading a domestic life, fetching the paper from the door or cooking scrambled eggs for his wife.

So far Cas hadn’t asked after the woman he’d been married to – was married to, technically – and Sam and Dean didn’t tell him that they drove back to her house just to find the place empty. They’d questioned the neighbors, braced for the news that Daphne had died in some horrible way but apparently she just packed her bags and set up the house for sale. Dean and Sam went over the place but found no traces of sulfur either. It really looked like Daphne had just upped and left. The whole thing remained mysterious. 

After a time, Dean had pulled himself together enough to continue eating and Sam eventually followed suit. Watching Cas blow on his spoon before he put it in his mouth was still weird, though.

: : :

Sam still remembered Hell and he still had nightmares but they were just that, dreams. They didn’t bleed over into his waking life. Sometimes he felt so grateful he just wanted to walk up to Cas and hug him. Other times he caught Cas staring into space or digging his fingernails into his palms and it was all he could do not to bury his face in his hands. No, Sam didn’t fool himself thinking they were out of the woods, but still. He’d just never thought he’d able to enjoy so much silence again.

On the third day after their arrival at the cabin, Sam sat at his laptop and watched a youtube clip of Dick Roman opening the new pediatric wing at a clinic in Baltimore. Try as he might, Sam couldn’t figure out the Leviathans’ game and it troubled him. As did the press that surrounded Roman’s circus acts. _Newsweek_ ran one issue after the other about him; one of its title pages showed a profile shot of Dick Roman with the bold legend ‘A New Hope’. Sam was afraid they didn’t even mean it ironically. The _New York Times_ compared him to John F. Kennedy, there were even rumors he was being considered for the next Nobel Peace Prize. There were Dick Roman fansites and NGOs who signed him up as their patron. 

Knowing what he knew and, more importantly, not knowing enough, the whole wave of euphoria gave Sam the chills.

When the endlessly reblogged smile of Dick Roman had creeped him out beyond measure, Sam closed his laptop and decided to go and stretch his legs.

: : :

Rufus’ cabin lay in sight of a small lake and a hiker’s trail ran all the way around the water, passing through stands of yellow leaved birches and long stretches of reed grass. Sam did the whole round tour, breathing the clear air and listening to the leaves rustle under his feet. Winter couldn’t be far off, he wagered. Already he’d seen two phalanxes of birds crossing the sky in a southern direction.

When Sam circled back to the clearing and the cabin, he shoved his hands into his pockets and kicked at a mound of leaves just for the fun of it. He came up to the group of maple trees that screened the house from the lake and looked up.

A strip of meadow separated Sam from the cabin’s front steps but he still had a good view of Dean and Cas sitting on the porch swing. Cas had hung out there before, he seemed to like the view and the porch was protected enough Cas could walk around on it without worrying. Sam was glad to see that Dean had joined him that time. The two of them carried so many unresolved issues one could fill two books with their grudges and then some. They seemed to be working on it though, in that weird, not-speaking way that they had.

Sam lingered by the tree-line, trying to get a good look at Dean’s face while Dean wasn’t watching and therefore not hiding anything. All the shit that had happened, Sam’s decline, Bobby’s death, Cas’ betrayal, had left deep cracks in Dean’s armor and they hadn’t healed. The way Sam saw it, Dean was still dangerously close to breaking down completely and Sam dreaded to imagine how that would take shape. He wished with all his heart he could make it better. Dean had never had an easy life and it had taken its toll over the years but he’d never teetered this close to the edge of shattering.

When he was with Cas, though, he seemed a bit more composed at least. A bit more together. Maybe they could keep each other from falling to pieces, Sam reflected and imagined it could be true. After he’d been delivered from what he’d believed to be his certain death and a quick slide back to Hell, hoping was a lot easier. 

He was still watching undetected when Dean turned to Cas to say something. Then, to Sam’s profound surprise, Dean put an arm around Cas shoulder and pulled him close. 

It wasn’t that big a gesture, just an exchange of comfort between one friend and another but suddenly Sam wondered-- no. No, Dean wouldn’t. He didn’t swing that way, never had.

Eyebrows rising ever higher, Sam watched as Cas placed a hand on Dean’s knee and Dean, after a mere second of hesitation, covered Cas’ hand with his. _I’ll be damned_ , Sam thought.

Whatever was happening up there was so new Sam had trouble making sense of what he saw. Or maybe it wasn’t that new, Sam realized, thinking back to all the times Dean had blown up in Cas’ face because Cas did something reckless at his own expense, the times Dean had tried not to grin over Cas’ cluelessness and failed. And of course Sam hadn’t missed the way Cas looked at Dean or the way he hovered at Dean’s shoulder when they walked into a fight. Who would have thought, though.

As Dean threaded his fingers with Cas’, Sam blended back into the cover of the trees. Now would be a good time to make himself invisible, he decided. After all, Sam thought and smiled, the trail around the lake was pretty nice. It wouldn’t do any harm if he walked it twice.

****

  
_end_  
=====  
 _beta by auburn & eretria_  
(28/03/12)

*Titles from the movie _The Shawshank Redemption_


End file.
